Airpoints

Elite tiers

Koru Gold confers Star Alliance Gold — the lowest tier in this programme with alliance-wide lounge access. Alliance mapping last verified 12 July 2026. Conditions beyond the threshold: At least half the Status Points must come from qualifying flights.. Compare lounge access across programmes →

Keeping a tier is a different bar from reaching it. The last column is what Airpoints publishes for a member who already holds the tier, over the same qualification window as the reaching figure; a dash means no separate retention threshold has been captured for that rung, not that renewal is automatic.

Every rung is conjunctive: Silver 450 SP with at least 225 from qualifying flights; Gold 900/450; Platinum 1,500/900; Black 3,200/1,920 — i.e. a 50% flight sub-minimum at Silver and Gold rising to 60% at Platinum and Black. What counts toward that sub-minimum differs by tier, and only Air New Zealand's 60% rungs carry the exclusion: at Silver and Gold, qualifying flights are defined to INCLUDE eligible Star Alliance flights alongside Air New Zealand-operated and partner-airline flights, while at Platinum and Black Star Alliance flying is explicitly excluded from the sub-minimum (it still counts toward the total). An earlier reading here extended the Platinum/Black exclusion to all four rungs, which over-stated the bar at Silver and Gold. Retention thresholds are lower (Silver 405 / Gold 810 / Platinum 1,350 / Black 3,040, each with flight sub-minima). Air New Zealand's Status Points are absolute points per sector, never a percentage of distance. Partner flying is calculated from Air NZ's own published earn-group and distance-band tables; own metal is calculated from Air NZ's own calculator table, which prices a sector by route group, fare group, booking class and fare product (Seat · Seat + Bag · The Works · Works Deluxe · Flexichange · Flexirefund) with no distance term at all — leave the fare product unset and you get the rate Air NZ publishes when no product is specified. The fare-product names are derived from the payload's own ascending ladder rather than read off the site, which no longer displays them. Two limits are worth stating: the table covers 86 city pairs, so a route Air New Zealand does not fly (Dunedin long-haul, Wellington or Christchurch to North America) is priced at its region-mates' rate rather than refused; and on Asia, Japan and North America the table publishes a single economy rate per booking class, so naming a fare product there returns an unknown while leaving it unset returns the figure. Booking classes N, I and R are published zeros; X is contradicted between the Koru T&Cs and Air NZ's own live rate table, so it stays unknown rather than being guessed either way. Note J is Air New Zealand's CHEAPEST Business letter and C its dearest — the reverse of the Star Alliance convention — and F is one of its fifteen ECONOMY letters, so nothing may be read across from a sibling programme. Cathay Pacific is a ZERO for Status Points, observed at Air New Zealand's own calculator (31 Aug 2026): the UI renders 0 Status Points in every cabin on both offered routes while paying full Airpoints, and the payload's Status-Point column for Cathay is data the instrument never serves — a 36-row table briefly encoded here on that dead column was retired the same day. The zeroing set is now confirmed live for all four of its carriers (Cathay, Etihad, Aircalin and Virgin Atlantic all render 0; Qantas on the same instrument renders NON-zero, so the suppression is carrier-specific), and the calculator's city pickers scope Cathay to Auckland/Christchurch–Hong Kong only. One publisher contradiction is recorded rather than resolved: the calculator grants Status Points on Qantas (matching its own data table) while Air New Zealand's partners page says Qantas earns none — both surfaces are live, and no Qantas rates are encoded here either way. Verified at airnewzealand.com, Aug 2026.

Earning reference